


Silver Dollar

by inbox



Series: In The End [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Western, Fallout Kink Meme, Gen, M/M, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 16:45:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fallout Western AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver Dollar

The town of Silver Dollar was in dire need of a doctor in 1881, having run the previous medical man out of town with charges of quackery and theft. When Doc Gannon arrived in town with a steamer trunk full of equipment and a doctor's bag with AG monogrammed in brass letters, he was given approval to stay and he nailed up his shingle soon after. His background was something of a mystery, what with the doctor being anything but forthcoming about his family and his history, but his MD was printed on heavy enough paper and it was from a proper house of learning, so it was figured that he could only be beneficial to the town as a whole.

His manners were considered lacking and his habits odd, including much advocation for strict hand washing and baths taken daily, but his methods were sound and he frowned on all quackery. Doc Gannon saw the town's down at heel from his back door, tending to the dirt farmers and working ladies and taking payment in corn and hogs and whatever coins they could spare. The town's wealthy and well-to-do, however, were treated at at rates high enough to have him accused of avarice in front of the town tribunal. That scurrilous charge was thrown out when he fixed the mayor of his clap and dug a ball round out of the marshal’s shoulder. He raised his prices a little more after that, just to put a few more noses out of joint.

Doc Gannon wasn't inclined to church, nor was he disposed to take up with any of the girls that had set their intentions on settling with a doctor of good reputation. He occasionally obliged the not so young wealthy widow Cassidy by accompanying her to dances benefiting the orphanage and the order of sisters who ran it, but a fitting match that never eventuated. Regardless, it gave the town scolds something to cluck about and the joke about town was that Doc Gannon was married to his work.

\--

Mister Boone returned to Silver Dollar in the fall of 1882, withdrawn and angry. Mrs Boone had passed on under delicate circumstances some years earlier, and Mister Boone had dealt with his grief by joining New California Rail as a location scout. The job had not bought him peace, and when he finally returned to town he spoke dark words about something the NCR had done at a place called Bitter Springs.  
The local opinion was that a few natives weren't nothing to bear a grudge over, but Mister Boone remained dour and prone to melancholy. He took a job working with the town marshal, deputised to arrest vagrants and defend the town from those bandits who preyed on the mail trains that passed through Silver Dollar. It wasn't a job he took to, and instead he found resourceful albeit impolite work as a hunter and trapper, content to spend his days amongst the hills and returning with a saddlebag full of coyote hides.

While Mister Boone did not take to town life well, he took a shine to Doc Gannon after the sawbones had treated a festering dog bite on his thigh and refused to take payment, seeing as Mister Boone was lacking in terms of finance thanks to a poor start to Spring hunting season. He returned to the Doc's house a few days later and left a brace of jack rabbits on his back porch with his thanks for the fine medical treatment, and attended his clinic when there'd been a dust up with a man demanding the doc's laudanum stash at knife point.

At what point the two men declared themselves friends was a topic of discussion for idle gossip, but they were social enough to take small beer and breakfast in town three times a week, and to spend the occasional evening smoking cigarillos and playing Faro in the back room of the Silver Dollar public house. Occasionally they took enough gin to be boisterous and require a room, but it was a rare occurrence and not remarked upon. 

When Mister Boone rented out his house and moved to the converted mud room at the back of Doc Gannon's house, opinion was favourable amongst those who cared to pay attention to such things. Doc Gannon, it was felt, would be the right sort to encourage Mister Boone to take a wife and resume his more or less respectable job with the town marshal, not necessarily in that order. It wasn't to eventuate, however, and the two men were content to live in the same house for a good few years. It was common for poor folk to attend the doc's house and find him hip deep in his tub on the back porch, scrubbing his back and listening to their complaints as Mister Boone sat close by, silently peeling spuds for their evening meal and keeping an eye on the proceedings.

Eventually his melancholia got the better of Mister Boone, and it was no surprise to many when he was found dead in a gully two miles south of town. He'd fed and watered his horse, wrote a short note, and hung himself by the neck. Doc Gannon declined to write the death certificate. He read Mister Boone's note, called him a damned dead idiot, and threw Mister Boone's letter of apology into the fire.

There were plenty of folk at his funeral, most attending out of respect for Doc Gannon than out of love for the terse, withdrawn Mister Boone. Gossip went that when the will was read and his few belongings left to the doc, addressed as 'Dear Arcade, whom I favour more than blood', Gannon's face was as dark as a thundercloud.

Doc Gannon sold his house and shuttered his clinic and left town not long after, citing a need for a change of scenery. Silver Dollar, so improved by his attendance as a doctor of good repute, was much saddened by his departure.


End file.
